My wife (Leslie) and I will be vacationing on a Celebrity Mediterranean Cruise from Barcelona to Venice on August 14th 2009.
We are 34 years old and looking to do some serious walking/sightseeing during the short time we have in Italy and Greece.

After doing some research on Italian full day tours, we've come to find out that the prices are usually per van (6-7 passengers) not per person.
(not sure if it's the same thing in Greece)

We're looking to see if there are others who will be on this same Cruise that are interested in looking into these same tours - The prices range from 500 Euros to 600 Euros per tour (van). Very affordable for 2-3 couples.(Much better quality and price than what the ship offers) - - I have much more details on this - -

Hi, I will not be on this Cruise, but reading your mail I noticed the high prices.
I know that a full day trip from Naples to the Amalfi coast or else for a Van is about 400euro(probably this year it's a little different?). try to contact Giuseppe De toro( the driver - guide I used - really nice and good english speaking!) and ask for his best offer!

We will not be on your cruise either. However, we were in an Eastern Med cruise in April. In Athens, I highly recommend Nikos Loukas at privategreecetours.com. For our group of six the cost for a full day tour in Athens was less than 450 Euro. Great driver-guide, very knowledgeable with excellent English. Definitely worth every penny.

We are 3 friends (between 23 and 31) going on the same cruise as you guys. We want to explore Rome and Athens making use of some kind of guided tour. Are you still looking for people to join you for a group booking? If you would be so kind to send us some more information, so we can have a look through it and let you know if we would be interested.

I did not get any responses for quite some time - The prices would have been a bit much for us. So, I started to research and found out that It's pretty easy to visit certain places without the tours.
Innitially, the tours I found would pretty much fly through all the different sites/areas - Leaving little time to enjoy.

So, we chose a main place for each stop and a secondary place. We will visit the main place with plenty of time to enjoy; if time permits, we will visit the secondary place of interest.